PARIS, March 27: Four militant suspects were set to go on trial here on Tuesday to face charges that they helped murder Afghan leader Ahmed Shah Masood, just two days before the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. The suspects are accused of forging and obtaining fake documents that enabled two suicide killers, Dahmane Adb al-Sattar and Bouraoui el-Ouaer, to pose as Tunisian journalists travelling with stolen Belgian passports. The fake journalists went to Mr Masood in the northern Afghan town of Khwaja Bahauddin for an interview and blew up themselves and the Afghan leader.

Mr Masood, known as the Lion of Panjshir, was a military leader of the Northern Alliance fighting the Taliban regime in power in Kabul in 2001.

French anti-terrorism judges Jean-Louis Bruguihre and Jean-Frangois Ricard said in November when ordering the suspects to stand trial that the investigation was not into Masood’s killing per se, but the extensive support network backing the assassins.

Using the passports found on Masood’s assassins, investigators said they traced the support network and found that Massoud’s killers were able to carry out the deed by using channels for transporting Islamist volunteers for jihad from Europe.

The four suspects are Youssef el-Aouni, 31, a Frenchman of Morroccan origin; Adel Tebourski, 41, also French of Tunisian origin; Abderahmane Ameroud, a 27-year-old Algerian, and Mehrez Azouz, 37, a French-Algerian.

According to investigators, Tebourski admitted to belonging to an Islamist group led by al-Sattar composed of about 10 people.

He also reportedly described how before Dahmane left for Afghanistan in May 2000, he exchanged up to 30,000 francs into dollars for the assassin.

Four other radical Islamist suspects also will face court in Paris this week.—AFP